Talk with security staff, with faculty, with students. And then talk some more.

Higher education campuses have been ramping up communication with seminars on safety awareness ever since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. And a chief focus has been on spreading the word broadly. Unlike elementary schools or even high schools, college populations are not clustered for easier alert in crisis.

"There is always a risk, any time you have an open campus. You can never guarantee 100 percent that there won’t be an emergency situation," said Steven Boyai, William Paterson University vice president for administration and finance.

The number of homicides on college campuses remains relatively low — an average of 18 a year nationwide over the past decade. But the stark horror of the Dec. 14 killings of 20 children and six staff members at the Connecticut school by a troubled young intruder has brought safety concerns to the forefront again.

Campuses already have visibly bolstered security. Many in North Jersey have commissioned police officers for on-campus duty. For instance, security staff members are posted at the entrances of residence halls, asking entrants for identification.

Security personnel undergo annual intruder and emergency preparedness training with local and state police, directed by the New Jersey College and University Public Safety Association (NJ CUPSA).

But John Collins, president of CUPSA, said the best option in the long term is to raise awareness. "There are a lot of resources out there and instructional manuals that colleges keep updated in case things happen, and trying to get people aware of them can only tighten security," he said.

Schools are heeding Collins’ advice. William Paterson University, for one, is educating its community more this semester, offering seminars to students and staff on emergency procedures.

"The next step for us is really just to educate everyone as much as possible so we can minimize that risk," Boyai said.

The seminars offer examples of suspicious behavior, how to remain alert, and what to do the moment something doesn’t feel right. Officials also have reminded the community about the student guide for emergencies, a comprehensive manual available on the school’s website.

At Fairleigh Dickinson University, the focus has been more on what staff should do, responding to administrators’ concerns.

David Miles, director of public safety at Farleigh Dickinson, said that when several department heads asked about emergency procedures, he developed a PowerPoint presentation with criminal justice Professor Jim Kenny. The presentation, which Teaneck police reviewed, established indicators of suspicious behavior as well as how to lead a group in a crisis.

Safety protocols have changed drastically over the past decade and are a constant work in progress. In the early 1990s, the intruder policy was to wait for a special weapons team to isolate a shooter, Collins said.

But after the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado that left 13 dead, experts surmised it was better to send in trained professionals the moment they reported to the scene, even if it was only a few at first.

The 2007 Virginia Tech University shooting that left 32 dead also yielded major procedural changes. Many colleges and universities reconsidered the way they disseminated information, adopting text message and email alert systems.